Monthly Archives: April 2011

Last month, Salman Khan presented the THE KHAN ACADEMY at TED Talks – probably the most exciting techno-pedagogic educational service created in the last decades. Every minute of this lecture is exciting for those interested in education. Bill Gates, who has been pouring in money into this project, personally came on stage to ask questions at the end. Mr Gates, in fact, did KA with his kids and thinks it’s „unbelieveable“.

I think the Khan Academy, a not-for-profit organization with the mission of providing a free world-class education to anyone, anywhere – will become a major force in revolutionizing the classroom in terms of learning, teaching, students interaction, assessment and also space.

Back in 2004, Sal, as he is called, still a hedge fund analyst – was asked by his cousins to give them lessons in maths. First he used Yahoo’s Doodle notepad then started to put videos on youtube. They were so appealing, that his cousins preferred the virtual cousin to the physical one. The response from other viewers was so overwhelming, that Salman started devoting himself entirely to this ‚social cause’, which was „strange“ for him as a hedge fund analyst. 2009 he quit his job and started creating hundreds of online tutorials. All free. Today 1 million students watch KA every month.

The 2200 pre-college mathematics and physics videos on the website offer basic arithmetic to calculus. I would say, the real power of the service is not the technology, it is the awesome ability of Salman to inspire kids and adults around the world watching them. One said: „first time i got a smile while while doing a derivative“, or the parents of a child with autism wrote their child who had „failed to learn maths through any other means started to get the decimals…and the dreaded fractions….” or another viewer said he „gets a natural high and a good mood fort he entire the day“.

KA is about ‘self paced learning’; teachers becoming ‚moderators/facilitators’; creating strong interactions between students and innumerable ways of creating new learning and teaching models using these building blocks.

Thanks to the new team of software engineers, a number of features were added to the platform which helps students to conduct self assessments; or ways that help teachers to track the learning patterns and jump in if help is necessary. With KA, teachers would “intervene only when a student is stuck.” One surprising knowledge gained by these tracking methods was that the seeminly ‚slow learners’ show the ability to become ‚gifted learners’ within a matter of weeks – they may be slow at certain times/certain topics, but once they ‘get it’, they can race ahead.

Promising results of tests have triggered off a discussion in the USA about using the KA as a basic building block for all schools in the country.

The Khan Academy has started moving into fields outside maths and physics, creating videos on history, the sciences, finances and venture capital. But mathematics is not history. Things may get complicated with value based issues – hopefully they are aware about the cultural and political sensitivities in education.

Salman Khan, father from Bangladesh (Barisal) and mother from India (Calcutta), was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. He went to MIT and Harvard Business school.